For many film fans it is already an animated movie classic, a charming tale of a robot driven by the need to clean up earth after thoughtless humans and his search for the girl he loves.

Marilyn Wann, author of Fat!So?, addresses the crowd at a fat pride rally

WALL-E has garnered rave reviews for its satire on consumer culture, in which future humans are depicted as a group of obese gluttons who never leave their padded floating arm chairs.

But one group is not amused - the swelling ranks of fat pride groups, who believe the film propagates anti-obesity hysteria comparable with the quest for the perfect body by the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany.

The backlash has become a cause celebre for a growth industry in the United States, where pro-flab "fat-tivists" are campaigning for human rights for the full of figure.

As the WALL-E controversy hit the headlines, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) was last week holding its annual convention in Los Angeles, a celebration of so-called "flabulous figures", seminars on fat discrimination, a fat fashion show, podgy pool parties and entertainment from weighty singing group The Fatimas.

Fighters for fat rights are calling for legislation to ban weight discrimination in the workplace, denouncing airlines that demand they buy two seats and car manufacturers whose seat belts are too small.

They are also battling doctors who won't treat patients who refuse to lose weight and companies that won't insure them.

They seek to reclaim the word "fat", dismissing terms like "overweight" and "obese" as morally loaded.

Research published in April by Yale University's Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity suggests they might have a point. It found that one in eight people now complain of weight discrimination, up from one in 14 a decade ago. The report compared the impact on victims compares with racism and sexism.

The anti WALL-E crusade began on the internet. Rachel Richardson of the Coalition of Fat Rights Activists (Cofra), used her blog, "The F-Word", to object that the film "singles out and targets obese people as the primary cause of mankind's demise."

Miss Wann (41 years in age and 20 stones in weight) is America's best known fighter for fat rights. She developed her motto - "free your ass and your heart and mind will follow" - and a magazine called "Fat!So?" after being turned down for health insurance because she was "morbidly obese".

After she produced the first editions of the magazine, she says: "I started hearing back from people who said that this was the first thing that made them feel OK. It's a ridiculous system of persecution."

Marilyn now has a book and website, also called Fat?So! She runs a synchronised swimming group called The Padded Lilies and The Bod Squad, a group of fat cheerleaders.

Miss Wann believes that WALL-E is typical of the stigmatising of fat people in the media.

She told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's the classic stereotype that fat people are stupid, smelly, lazy, disgusting and out of control.

"These are the same stereotypes that have been used for every group of outsiders: whether it's people of colour, or the disabled, or immigrants."

Miss Wann said the film company would never have considered stereotyping black people "dancing a jig" in the way they have done so with fat people.

She added: "Pixar should be out of business for portraying this level of prejudicial bigotry-mongering. These are 19th-century hatreds repackaged in modern animation. It's amazing."

Marilyn is just as angry about the attitude of the airline industry to porky passengers.

"I don't want to be pushed up against a thin passenger sitting next to me any more than they wants to be pushed up against me," she said. "But the seats keep getting smaller. I don't need all of the chairs in coach to be available to fatties in a comfortable way but I do think fat people have the right to interstate and international transportation just like everyone else."

The main task of groups like Naafa, Cofra and Largesse is to lobby for new laws to ban weight discrimination in the workplace. Miss Wann helped win that battle in San Francisco. But just four cities and one state in the US - Michigan - have explicit protection for fat people. Britain has no such laws.

Sanda Solovay, a fat discrimination lawyer, said: "Everywhere else where people have a weight discrimination claim they have to rely on disability law. It's case by case and it depends on the individual judge.

"It could be work discrimination, it could be access to education, it could be access to a theatre seat.

"There have even been child custody cases where someone wants to provide a loving home for a child, but they were blocked because they are fat. Or someone loses custody because the child is fat. People use weight as a proxy for health and morality."

British writer Shelley Bovey, who founded the UK size acceptance movement and wrote the book Being Fat is Not a Sin, is pushing for UK legislation to stop fat hatred along the lines of anti-racist or religious hatred laws.

She said: "I don't like censorship but I've been saying for 20 years that something needs to be done to stop the bullying.

"Being overweight is the only facet of human experience in this society where people can get away with saying the most pejorative, nasty and cruel things to you."

While the fat pride movement has been credited with improving the body image and confidence of many fatties, the prevailing wisdom is that fat equals unhealthy.

Fat-tivists respond by citing recent academic studies by the "health at every size" movement, detailed in Paul Campos's book The Obesity Myth., which argues that our genes not our lifestyles determine the broad parameters of our weight.

A study of 25,000 men by The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research found that even the obese who exercise are less to die from heart attacks, strokes and cancer than sedentary skinny people.

Marilyn Wann believes the scientific and political establishments are conspiring against fat people. She said: "Our scientists are serving to justify social prejudice. We've had the same thing in the past. We had a eugenics movement fuelled by anti-Semitism that was supposedly scientific and we've had phrenology, studying bumps on your head to prove that proved whites were people and black skinned people were not the same."

"All the obesity hysteria mongering assumes that there are correlations between fatness and illness. But if you include other variables like fitness and good nutrition and stress from living in a discriminatory society and lack of access to healthcare because fat people are not allowed to have health insurance, the correlation starts to look non existent. People want fat people to die because we should be punished for our lazy, stupid gluttony."

This is a message that has yet to be widely heard in the UK, where doctors, politicians and health campaigners are quick to point out that Britain could be next in line for an "obesity epidemic".

Last month, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine blamed fat people for contributing more than their fair share to global food shortages. This month, David Cameron accused those who eat too much and take too little exercise of being complicit in creating a culture that lacks self-discipline.

Fatima Parker, UK spokesperson for the International Size Acceptance Association says the government ought to campaign against "anti-fat" attitudes as much as obesity.

"Fat discrimination is even worse in this country than in the US because you see more big people and hear their voices over there," she explains.

"Fat people here are constantly told that we are failures: as people, as parents, as role models."

Ms Parker's argument is that overweight people are less likely to become morbidly obese, if they are allowed to feel comfortable about their bodies. She believes derogatory language and stereotypes about fat people as greedy will only make them eat more.

"On TV shows such as You Are What You Eat and The Biggest Loser, we are made out to be disgusting and less than human - called cows and whales.

It's hardly going to make me go and eat carrots and run around the garden.

"I would rather have cancer or diabetes than serious depression about how I look."

But with nearly one in four people labelled by the NHS as obese, and with healthcare costs rising on both sides of the Atlantic, ministers and officials in both the US and UK are in no mood to be tolerant about people's right to choose their size.

Marilyn Wann says: "Across the political spectrum, people who would normally be opposed to each other on every single topic are in lockstep agreement about the obesity epidemic."

But even fat pride campaigners are divided between groups that embrace fatness in all its forms and those that seek to improve peoples' self esteem to help them lose weight.

In the US, some fat-tivists reject those who support dieting as faux fatties. The death of a senior member of the pressure group Largesse from complications after weight loss surgery, divided opinion recently.

The British size acceptance movement turned against its founder Shelley Bovey when she dropped six stone in weight and started campaigning for healthy eating.

"Overweight people tend to have very low self esteem," she admits. "I have never met anyone who I believe is totally happy with being very large. However much self confidence they have, if you live in a society that hates overweight people it is very, very difficult to be yourself."

1 comment:

"It's the classic stereotype that fat people are stupid, smelly, lazy, disgusting and out of control."

I would have to agree with that stereotype. I mean how can you as a fat person get angry at a doctor who won't treat you, or an insurance company who won't insure you for not being willing to lose weight. And therefore be anything other than 1)"stupid" 2)"lazy" 3)"out of control." Duh! You're gonna have a hard time getting insured. Who in their right minds would insure someone that is much more likely to die because of a heart attack or stroke because due to the fact that they are fat and are not willing to lose weight. My question to all the fat people around the world is this. Do you like being fat? I know if i were fat i would hate it, i would do everything i could not to be fat. so why are their groups out there that support fat people? They are sending out a message to everyone saying that its alright to be fat, which is not true. Maybe if the people protesting the movie WALL-E would use their energy for something better, say sit ups, then they wouldn't be so fat and we wouldn't have to listen to them complain about stupid crap.